nodesite.md

How to build a node.js site

Prerequisites:

General tools and skills:

• Have a computer.
• Be familiar with JavaScript, HTML, CSS.
• Be familiar with a terminal. If you're on windows, PowerShell will probably do, but I have had great success with cygwin and console.
• Be familiar with a text editor in which you can adjust automatic indentation and line endings. Vi/vim, Sublime Text or Notepad++ will do. Use an indent of 2 spaces and UNIX-style line endings.

Software you will need:

• node. I suggest downloading it directly from the site. You can get it from your OS's package maintainer, but oftentimes the versions are lagging behind. More on that later.
• git. You can grab it from your package maintainer, but it is also safe to download it directly from the website.

Get started

I usually make a directory called devel where I store all the things that you you develop or compile. I recommend doing this to keep you organized.

mkdir ~/devel; cd ~/devel

1. Start your project by creating another directory called hello inside devel.

mkdir hello
cd hello

2. Now, initialize a git repository in hello. This will create a .git directory which will keep the repository state.

git init

3. Create a .gitignore file with the following contents to prevent committing temoprary files and node modules into the repository:

.DS_Store
node_modules
npm-debug.log

4. Initialize your project as an npm package to track and save dependencies.

npm init

Enter version/author info if desired, but it's OK to just press enter at each prompt.

5. You should now have the following files/directories in your project directory:

.
├── .git
├── .gitignore
└── package.json

1 directory, 2 files

Make a web server.

We are going to be using express, which is a widely-used framework that allows for easy creation of web servers.

1. Install express through npm. The --save flag tells npm to add express to the dependency list in package.json

npm install --save express

2. Create a file called app.js with the following content:

var express = require('express')
  , app  = express()
  , port = 3000;

app.get('/', function (req, res) {
  res.send('Hello World');
});

app.listen(port, function () {
  console.log('Server running at %d', port);
});

3. Run your server:

node app

4. See it in action by navigating to http://localhost:3000 in your browser:

5. If everything works, commit your changes to the git repository!

git commit -am "initial commit"